Third in the series of illustrations drawn as a subcontract for White Wolf's Scroll of the Monk gamebook for their long-running RPG series Exalted.

This one's a little different from the others, in that I did the least amount of work on it, for various reasons. I don't usually leave something this unfinished before handing it off, but there was reasons.

As with the others in this set, the top two frames are my work, the final frame shows the image as it appears in print after being sweetened by the tone artist.

The man responsible in this case is fan-favorite: Shaun Healey. Ahhh, yes, I knew him before he became a rockstar.

The description for the drawing called for the character to resemble Bruce Lee, and I aims to please... Shaun was given wide latitude in the background and some specific instructions to change up the lines, which he did quite nicely. If you ain't seen his work, check him out.

More to come, I expect.

EDIT

There's a possiblity that this particular illustration didn't appear in the book after all... I haven't seen a copy to check against yet, but when I find out for sure then I'll mention it.

Yeah, it didn't get into the book. They seem to have put Mel's there in it's place on page 83. They are quite similar. Either way, your work is definitely a good addition to any book. Hopefully they'll have more of your work in books for the future, and hope you actually enjoy working on Exalted. Keep up the great job.

That's the plan, anyhow. Soon as I get my home studio resituated post-move, I intend to send stuff out to them and others. I really enjoy the Exalted universe, so I definitely hope that I get more of those.

Most perspective classes and books are REALLY boring, but it's one of those things you just gotta push through. I hated 'em, and it always seems like the knowledge I got in classes just sort of poured back out of my ears, but I realised a while back that you just can't get by without it... faking it only goes so far.

So I've been busting my head trying to get a good handle on it, and it's helped improve my work a good bit. I'm still not a master, but I'm getting better at it.

One thing that helps is to draw the rough sketches without the grids, but using foreshortening and depth... then drawing in the perspective grids to match and support the angle established by the sketch. As long as you can get two lines, you can extrapolate to find the vanishing points and build the rest using maths. It takes a lot of practice, but it's totally worth it.

The other ones you've posted here on DA have been in the book. And I don't know your real name, but for MESS the credits are: HOON, Shaun Healey, Ben McSweeney, Jeff Simpson and Linda Tso.
Your contract didn't include you getting two copies of the book for free? Both me and my boyfriend got two copies for free for doing art for it.

Well, at least that's right. Funny thing is, though, I don't think Shaun worked on any others besides this one, so if he's got a credit, what else would it be for? Are you sure it's not in there? Like... maybe small, or in the back or something?

I gotta get a copy someplace.

I was under subcontract, and never dealt directly with White Wolf... essentially MESS gets the contract, we get the jobs, and the cash gets divvied up. I was planning to send a direct submissions package through another friend of mine who's worked with Brian Glass (I believe he's still the AD for Exalted, yes?) after the holidays. I'm hoping I actually get a response this time... last couple times I sent in submissions in for Exalted they must've gotten sucked into a black hole... I never even got a form rejection letter.

Normally I do get comp copies (I got a little shelf for all of 'em... almost up to a round dozen), but not with subcontracts. All things considered it's not the way I prefer to work, but when the job comes up for an established series like this I'm not gonna quibble about it.

I'm pretty sure it's not there... sometimes they mess up the credits, so it might be that Shaun got credited even though he didn't do anything that made it to the book.

I've been wondering how the subcontract thing works... both myself and my boyfriend work for them independently. Anyway, Brian's still the AD for Exalted, so you should give him a poke about the whole thing. Personally I love receiving free books for my efforts, especially since I play the game myself.

The subcontracting thing is just about networking... in the case of MESS, it generally happened through a dedicated subforum on their board where only qualified artists were allowed access. Got some nice little jobs that way, while it lasted.

Direct contact with the client is always better, though. I'd much rather work for the publisher personally than through a subcontract (or a sub-subcontract, as was sometimes the case). For one thing, you get more money that way. For another, it's easier to make sure the job goes as planned... the more layers between you and the client, the better the odds that something, somwhere, will get sticky.

Just a little... don't have a 360 myself (no time, no cash to spare), but I've got friends.

It's a gorgeous game, the actual gameplay is very reminiscent of kill.switch, and older game with the same 3rd-person cover-and-move strategy to the action. Gears of War is much more entertaining and has a MUCH better camera (I love the GoW run-cam), but kill.switch got kinda repetetive, and ended up in the pile of "games I haven't gotten around to beating yet, but occasionally take out and think about playing before remembering that I have shit to do".

God of War was pretty awesome too... I'm looking forward to the sequel for that.